Companies are working on industrializing production processes for e-textiles, and soon we will see wearable technology as a category in shops on every high-street. We’ve become so used to technology being something we purchase ready-made.
When selecting the cloths we will wear and the technology we’ll use, we’ve become so used to it being something we purchase ready-made, instead of having it made-to-order or making it ourselves. We choose a brand, a style, a colour of plastic, we select from a variety presented to us but we have no control over what goes onto these selves.

We want to find out what people want e-textile and wearable technology to do for them by providing tailor-made experiences. If there are no ready-made objects but only made-to-order, what will we order? Do we order the same things as we see in the shops and the media? Or can we imagine something different?

In this course, we will perform an experiment in the above scenario. We will collect six commissions from local Linzers who have ideas for what a particular technology could do for them. Students will be trained in tailoring e-textile and wearable technology and will then meet and interview the local “customers” before going on to interpret, design and realize their commissions.

Presentation:

Through a series of short lectures and introductory activities, students will be introduced to smart textiles, wearable technology, soft circuits and electronic textiles. We encourage a learning-by-doing approach to making technology. Lectures will be brief, and the majority of course time will be spent in hands-on introductory exercises, prototyping and producing final commissions.

The exact wearable technology that these commissions will be based off will be announced at the beginning of the course.

BIKE LIGHT JACKETS

We just got back from Linz/Austria where we played E-Textile Tailor Shop for 3 days with a wonderful group of students at the Art University. We elicited commissions for custom Bike Light Jackets from 5 local Linzers ahead of time and students know nothing of this until the first day of class.

The following day we taught a crash-course into Arduino programming and e-textile materials and techniqies.

In the late afternoon that same day Students formed five groups of three each, and each met with one of the locals to receive their commission.

Daniela’s – Low-Tech Reflect

Dawn, Giacomo, Melanie

Hannes’ – Cowboy Safety

Afra, Mirela, Sam

Luis’ – Maritime Lights

Amir, Karoline, Stefan

Martin’s – Classic

Guillem, Tania, Wai Wai

Rosi’s – Spiral of Awareness

Ines, Kay, Kevan

Two of the commissioners (Hannes and Martin) brought jackets that they already owned to be altered into bike light jackets. For two other commissions (Rosi, Luis) we shopped for second hand jackets ahead of time based on their initial wishes that they submitted to us the week before. Only Daniela’s commission for a netted vest was made from scratch. In retrospect it was a really good decision to work on “augmenting” existing clothing items rather than tailoring from scratch, because students only had 2 days to complete the commissions and there would not have been time for them to tailor jackets from scratch.

Students had 1-2 hours with their commissioners to interview them about what they want and decide on what they could realistically offer to make them. After the commissioners left, the students spent another few hours coming up with with a concrete translation of what had been talked. This process of interpreting the wishes/desires/requests of the commissioners takes time. Students needed to negotiate the wishes of their commissioners and their own creative input as well as what they could realistically make in 2 days. At the end of this first full day, some of the ideas had grown to include quite a lot of different functions, including various sensors and indicator signals. By the morning of the second day, students had simplified these ideas down to a single function and began work.

Work on the second day included:
Deciding where the LED lights should go on the jacket (front back, area…)
How to turn the light on and off (separate switch or just plug in battery)
What kinds of LEDs to use (SMD single LEDs, through-hole LEDs with curled legs, Neopixels)
Plan and implement the code for the Arduino Flora
Prototype the circuit with crocodile clips or on a breadboard
Make samples to test materials, techniques, aesthatics
Draw how to layout the circuit on the body
Is the circuit visible or hidden? If visible, what kind of style is it (handmade, slick, sporty…)?
Transferring the circuit layout to the garment
Sewing, sewing and fusing!
Fixing breaks, debugging code…
Task division (circuit layout, sewing, programming)

We organized sandwich materials and ate together for lunch, and for dinner we cooked vegetable stew with couscous while the students continued working. The second full day of work ended at 23:00.

Everybody was back at 10:00 the next morning to continue work and finish their circuits, sensors and LED soldering.

At 16:00 on the second day the local Linz commissioners came back to pick up their “orders”.

Daniela’s – Low-Tech Reflect

Hannes’ – Cowboy Safety

Luis’ – Maritime Lights

Martin’s – Classic

Rosi’s – Spiral of Awareness

After three days of learning and hard work to produce these commissioners we asked the student tailors to calculate how much time they had spent working on their jackets and to propose a price that they would ask for this work if it had been a real commission.
We also asked the commissioners to tell us how much they would want to pay for a Bike Light Jacket like the one they had commissioned.